About the Artist
Ann Lenore Vanture

In December of 1962, the pop artist Andy Warhol was asked in an interview, "What do your rows of Campbell's soup cans signify?" Warhol responded, "They're things I had when I was a child"...and that is exactly what my Paper Minis artwork signifies to me. Paper Minis are an expression of the warm fuzzies of my childhood, and are a form of Pop Art but are easier to carry around than a large silk-screened canvas of a can of soup.

Surprisingly, I don't have an active dollhouse on display at my home, instead I put my childhood furniture in a decorated display case using my Paper Minis wallpapers. I just love little things and maintain display cabinets full of them all over my house.

Many of my creations were inspired by other life memories. For instance, the vintage Paper Minis remind me of visits to my grandparents in Missouri and to my Great Grandma Woo in Kentucky.

The McDonald's fast food items and vintage place mats remind me of when we returned from our Army tour of duty in France in the 1960s and discovered these new fun places to eat, which were popping up everywhere along the highways to Missouri. The Olive Garden restaurant items remind me of the many times I took my mother and father (his favorite restaurant second only to local Mexican restaurant Anita's) to dinner. Obviously, Paper Minis represent events and memorabilia close to my heart. 

I never focused on making miniatures until about 1998. But the love of minis is everywhere in my life. As further examples, if you open my powder room medicine cabinets you won't find room deodorizer or Advil...instead an outstanding collection of fast food meal toys–going back to the miniaturized McDonald's French Fries that makes into a kid's transformer fighter. In the other cabinet can be found souvenirs from my childhood including a tiny glass bottle of gold water...Senator Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign handout given to me by a childhood friend. You can see a bunch of the cabinets here.

My younger sister, Deedle, is actually the force that got me started on Paper Minis. She has spent years populating a wonderful Victorian house our Father built for her as well as populating many room boxes. One day she showed me her latest dollhouse accessories purchase. I was impressed, but felt that the little kitchen groceries could be improved. Having worked as a graphic artist for years, and with Deedle's encouragement, I quickly became obsessed with creating the perfect 1:12 scale miniatures. A task that took a lot longer than I thought it would. The resulting Paper Minis' process is my special "secret recipe" that maximizes color, texture, crisp lines and readable typesetting at a scale 1/12th our human size or smaller!

If you have been following Paper Minis over the years on-line from 2003, you know it has been an interesting journey. Paper Minis' format has run the gamut of high-tech on-line downloading...to honor-system on-line downloading...to auto-executable CDs. Paper Minis became known all over the globe, and how exciting for me to have e-pals from as far away as Australia! Anyway, each of those systems had its virtue, and customers liked Paper Minis regardless, but I was always trying to perfect the product line.  So my next logical step in developing Paper Minis products was to develop pre-printed, pre-cut kits. Armed with a new computerized cutter I was cutting morning, noon and night. All that labor meant higher priced Paper Minis and took me away from the creative part – designing! I gave that method up almost immediately!

Then came the light-bulb moment. From customer feedback, I learned hobbyists like to cut their own Paper Minis. It's therapeutic. So back to the drawing board I went, and shortly thereafter Paper Minis easy-to-make, DIY, pre-printed kits were born. In tandem with the easy-to-make DIY pre-printed kits, I spend a great deal of time putting out the Paper Minis Newsletter and designing sample projects in many doll scales. These are enjoyed by literally thousands of club members – I like to whet members' appetite with club projects so that they can't resist the catalog of available kits. It's also a great way to learn the hobby before making a purchase.

In today's high-tech marketplace, my clientele of mini-hobbyists are up-to-speed with technology, and many want to print their own kits now. As of the beginning of 2023, 20 years from the start of Paper Minis, I announced that all Paper Minis products are offered as digital download kits. Kits you can print yourself or take to a copy center...many times! It's like I'm starting all over again. :)

And so this website lets you know which kits are available for purchase, and which ones still need to be upgraded to digital formation. Then, your actual purchases need to be bought at the Etsy Paper Minis store front, and you will see the link for each kit in the catalog pages here at the website. 

FYI, just in case you were confused about the name of this business, the registered business name is The Bottega Design Studio, the URL is PaperMinis.com. As you may have figured I'm back to the original URL, which is easier to remember than DIYDollAccessories.com. There's a good reason for the back and forth, but too boring to get into here.

In closing, I think you will enjoy making Paper Minis as much as I enjoy designing them. Don't be fooled, every Paper Minis goes through a rigorous design process and are copyright-able as unique products. Save and date all your Paper Minis and perhaps your grandchildren will be enthralled with your collection. That reminds me of the "little things drawer" my Grandmother Woodruff kept in her kitchen to keep us busy when we visited!